Court strikes down petition law used against Hometown Democracy

In a rebuff to the Florida Legislature, and its allies at the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the First District Court of Appeal has sided with Hometown Democracy. The court on Wednesday ruled that the law that created the process that allows the revocation of petition signatures is unconstitutional and that rules used by the state to implement the process are also not allowed.

The ruling raises fresh questions about the decision to deny Hometown Democracy a place on the ballot since thousands of the signatures gathered by the group were in fact revoked. The opinion states that the law "are unconstitutional because they do not ensure ballot integrity. They do not serve to confirm compliance with constitutionally-specified requirements for submission of proposed amendments through the initiative process...Instead they serve to burden the initiative process with requirements that are not prescribed in the constitution." Read ruling here.Download hometown_democracy.pdf

Comments

[Common Sense]

Somebody's math is bad. Hometown Democracy missed the ballot by over 60,000. Only 11,000 were revoked. So with or without revocation, this bad idea still failed to get the nubmer of signatures it needed to be on the ballot.

[Disgusted Republican]

Common Sense - stop, you are making sense and I don't think folks would understand that.

[Roberta Richardson]

FHD missed counted signatures because Florida stopped counting FHD in midstream, to count illegal ones!